To whom it may concern

Saturday, 29 July 2017

During the early part of his
ministry, Bryan Chapell was speaking at a series of meetings held by a small
church.More people than expected began
attending and the church had prayer meetings for those who were coming.As Bryan listened to the people pray, he
noticed that no-one prayed for one particular young woman who had a notable
punk haircut.Bryan suspected that
no-one was praying for her because she wasn’t the sort of person that they wanted
in their church.So he spoke to the
pastor.

‘Oh, that is our Maria,’ the
pastor replied.‘She is a loved part of this
church family.’Then he told Bryan her
story.

Maria grew up in a family that was
indifferent to her.She attended the
church’s Vacation Bible School as a child.She was quite troubled and wild.

On one occasion her class in
school took an excursion to a local university.There she met a young man who asked her out.She was flattered, and romance blossomed.They got married in a few weeks.Then Maria discovered how this guy afforded
his car and apartment.He was dealing
drugs.She told him that she was trying
to escape that sort of lifestyle, and that if he didn’t stop she would leave
him.He threatened that he would kill
himself is she left.He didn’t stop
dealing drugs, she left and he did kill himself.She was now fifteen, a widow and pregnant.

Maria decided to turn to the only
people who had shown real kindness to her—the church.As they loved her, she fell in love with
Jesus.She was a regular part of that
church community, was coming to the meetings and bringing one of her friends
with her.Maria had discovered the grace
and life that this parable is all about!

I know that I have spoken on this
parable a number of times before, but I have never dealt with one of its crucial
themes.This is a resurrection
story.Look at the words of the father
to the elder brother, ‘your brother was dead but is now alive.’This is the story of the prodigal’s
resurrection!

The
departure

The younger son had it all.He belonged to a wealthy family who could
afford servants, hired men and a fattened calf.He had a future with an inheritance awaiting him.Most of all, he had the most amazing father.This father does not change in this
story.The loving and gracious man that
welcomed the son home is the same man that the son left.Many young people crave a father like this.But he did not value his father’s love.

This story is like the human
story.Our first parents, Adam and Eve,
had it all.Yet they did not value our
Heavenly Father’s love, and so they rebelled against him.We have continued in that rebellion.‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each
one turning to their own way’ (Isaiah 53).By nature we have lived with hostility towards God’s loving rule.

The
death

As I thought of this parable, I
asked myself, ‘in what way did this young lad die?’I was surprised about how many ways there is.To start with, he was leaving family, home
and community—in that culture it would have not been unusual for there to have
been a funeral when such a disobedient child walked out (he was now dead to
them).He was morally dead—the law said
that such a child deserved to be put to death.His older brother describes him as a ‘waster’—he was living a life with
no direction and purpose.He surrounded
himself with shallow friends who were nowhere to be seen when his cash ran
out.The father said he was lost.He was financial bankrupt.He was alone and despised.He was rejected by people who would not feed
him.He was in danger of dying in a
famine.

The New Testament says that
without our lives being centred on Jesus we are like the leaving dead.We are dead in transgressions and sin
(Ephesians 2).Without Jesus our life
lacks hope, purpose and meaning.We are
morally bankrupt.We are on a road
without any hope that is heading to what is called the second death.Ours is a story of death.

When we were in Croatia, we stay
in a lovely village called Jelsa.Jelsa
is a civilised place.There are many
tourists, but they are well behaved.Yet
we have gone to the capital of the island, Hvar town, a couple of times.Hvar Town is popular with the younger,
eighteen to twenty-five year-old crowd.There is a different feel.It
seems that there is a lot more drink and the young people are seeking to pick
one another up.It is tempting to
condemn.‘Would you look at the state of
your man?’‘What does she think she is
not wearing?’However those young people
need our compassion.In their search for
love they will use and be used by each other.Their culture is empty.Their
friendships are shallow.Their search
does not offer meaning.We follow a man
who looked of the crowds with compassion, who came to seek and save that which
is lost, who offered life in its fullness, and who came not to condemn but to
save.

The
deliverer

There was another son who had it
all but went to a distant land.This son
did not go in disobedience but love.He
had it all but he gave it up for us.He
didn’t leave home seeking life but giving life.How different Jesus is to the younger brother!

Yet, like the younger brother,
Jesus experienced what it was like to end up in the pits.He was rejected by fickle friends, he was
left all alone, and he actually did die.It is because of this man that we can be welcomed home and the heavenly
Father can say about us, ‘she was dead but is now alive.He was lost and is now found.’Now resurrection life is ours.The truth is that there is no longer any
condemnation on us.

Do we delight to be home?Do we cling lovingly to the Father as the
Father clings lovingly to us?Are we
glad that he has saved us from the perils of the distant land?

I want to finish by telling you
about one of the most delightful Christians I have ever met.Her name was Emma McCann, but everyone knew
her as Auntie Emma.She had been a
member in the last church I served.

Auntie Emma was in a nursing home
in Belfast when I first met her.She had
severe dementia.My initial visit was
only done so that I could say that I had called on her.I couldn’t see what good I could do for
her.I did not realise all the good that
she was going to do for me.

When I visited, I found a woman
whose short-term memory only had a two-minute span, but whose mind was in love
with Jesus.She smiled as she spoke
about him.She declared her love for
him.She quoted hymns and verses. I explained to Caroline, ‘that woman
ministered to me.’I have often wondered
if such love would flow out of me if I my mind was stripped to its core.

Auntie Emma’s favourite hymn
went, ‘I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold, I’d rather be his than have
riches untold.’She kept on reciting it.You see, Auntie Emma knew how good it was
that the she had been brought home to her Heavenly Father, and so nothing in
the distant land shone so brightly any more.She had been dead but brought to life.She found what she was looking for and he gave her more satisfaction
than she dreamed. Now she is living in
eternity with the source of her delight.

Sunday, 25 June 2017

A man asked to see me to talk
about Christianity.He told me that he
believed that Jesus was a great teacher, but he didn’t seem to think that he
was more than a great teacher.The other
thing that he told me was that he struggled with an awful sense of guilt.Those two things are actually related.If Jesus only tells you how to live a good
life, then he offers no solution for the fact that we fail to live a good life.

How do you destroy
self-righteousness and pride?What is
the source of Christian joy?Can God
prove that he loves you?What do you do
when you are overcome with feelings of guilt?How do you know that Christianity isn’t just the same as every other
religion?How can you change and become
more loving?Why should you
forgive?The answer to each of these
questions is the same: look at the cross of Jesus!

This morning we are going to look
at the cross through two sets of eyes.Firstly, we are going to think about what the centurion saw when he
watched Jesus die.Then, secondly, I
will tell you about some of the things I see when I think about Calvary.

What
did the centurion see when he saw Jesus die?

The centurion hated being
stationed in Jerusalem.Jerusalem was in
a relative backwater of the Roman Empire.The Jews that lived there hated the Roman occupation and despised the
soldiers who enforced it.

Passover was a particularly
difficult time, with pilgrims flocking to the city from far and wide.During the festival rebellious thoughts were
more likely, as the people were hoping for a political messiah who would set
them free.

That year there was talk of a
Nazarene carpenter, who apparently claimed to be king, and had entered the city
to great fanfare.However, the religious
leaders had arrested him, Pilate had interviewed him, the crowds had cried for
his blood, and now he was being crucified.

This centurion had overseen many
crucifixions.He was only doing his
job.He had no longer felt any pity,
morbid fascination or even revulsion.Yet there was something about this execution that would remain with him
for the rest of his life.What was it
about the way Jesus died that caused him to conclude that this man was innocent
and that he was the Son of God?

It wasn’t the many prophecies
that were been fulfilled in even incidental events that were unfolding.The centurion was not a Jew and had not read
their scriptures.He did not know that
these things were written about hundreds of years before.Who was responsible for the death of
Jesus?You could blame greedy Judas, the
jealous religious establishment, cowardly Pilate or the easily-led crowd.We could also say that we put Jesus on the
cross, for it was our sin that sent him there.But ultimately Jesus died because God had planned it.The Scriptures had foretold how God would
send a substitute for his people’s guilt.

Matthew links the earthquake to
the centurion’s conclusion.As well as
that earthquake, there was three hours of darkness during the afternoon.It is interesting that the early opponents of
Jesus didn’t deny that the darkness happened (but said it was an eclipse), and
the gospels were written during the lifetime of many who would have been there.

Then there was the dignity in how
Jesus died.The centurion had never seen
a man pray for those who taunted him.Yet Jesus pleaded, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.’Even the criminals who were being
crucified with him hurled abuse at him, and yet when one of them changed his
mind, Jesus spoke words of forgiveness and assurance.‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’Or, what about the loving way Jesus looked
down from the cross and told John to behold his mother?Even in the time of his greatest despair, he
makes practical arrangements for Mary.

Then there is the manner of the
death itself.At one stage Jesus cried
out in despair, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’The centurion did not know that Jesus was quoting
the twenty-second psalm (a psalm which also speaks of the victim’s deliverance).Jesus seemed to see purpose in his suffering,
stating that the task was finished.While it was normal for the crucified to speak their final words in a
weak, exhausted, muffled voice, Jesus lets out a loud cry before he dies.While the condemned normally tilted their
head back to grasp for air, Jesus bowed his head and committed his spirit to
God.It is as if no-one is taking his
life from him but that he is giving it up himself.

Seeing all this convinced the
centurion that Jesus was an innocent man and that he was the Son of God.Son of God was a title the centurion would
have reserved for the Emperor.He was
giving Jesus the highest praise his culture let him imagine.Job done, the centurion marches his men back
to the barracks.If he survived his
military service and went home to whatever part of the Roman word he was from,
I imagine that he never forgot what he saw that day on the hill of Calvary.

What
do you see when you look at the cross?

I see the centre-piece of our
faith.The apostle Paul can sum up his
preaching saying, ‘I preach Christ crucified.’The risen Jesus told a couple of the disciples, on the road to Emmaus,
that the whole of the Bible pointed to him, and his death and resurrection.If the cross is not at the centre of your
religion, then you religion is not that of the Bible.

I see justice.I was doing a questionnaire with some of the
small groups in our last church.These
were good Christian people.I asked them
what attributes come to find when they think of God.I was surprised that no-one mentioned
holiness.The heavenly chorus cries,
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty.’How can a perfectly holy God, who will not tolerate our evil, accept us
as his sons and daughters?Only through
the cross!At the cross, God shows that
he is both just and the one who justifies the ungodly.

I see a sacrifice of infinite
worth.Not only is Jesus a sufficient
price for your sin, he is a sufficient price for the sins of the world.Indeed, he is a sufficient price for the sins
of a million worlds.If all the sins of
everyone in this room were lumped on your shoulders, Jesus’ death is enough for
you.Your sins are viler than you have
imagined, but never dishonour the sacrifice of the Son of God by claiming that
they are too great to be covered by his blood. No matter what you have done, you can have
confidence in his forgiveness and joy in his grace.

But I also see a sacrifice of
definite value.The Son knew those that
he would purchase for the Father.This
is an actual payment for actual sin—our sin, past, present and future.This is personal.The apostle Paul could speak of the Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Finally, I see love.This is love, not that we loved God, but that
he loved us, and gave his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.‘Unless you are assured God loves you, it is
pretty hard to do anything in the Christian life’ (Jack Miller).We are told to behold (look and see) the love
of God for us.This beholding is
life-changing.We love because he first
loved us.Our love is a response to his
far greater love.So, as I said a number
of months ago, ‘your problem is not that you don’t love God enough, but that
you fail to see how much he loves you.’Behold your saviour upon the cross.

Saturday, 17 June 2017

John Newton was a slave-trader
who had rejected the faith his mother had taught him.He indulged in every sensual pleasure, and
became an angry and bitter man.Then he
surprised himself by crying to God for mercy in a storm on the sea.Coming to Christ transformed him.He turned into a contented, loving and joyful
man.He became a Church of England
minister, a famous hymn-writer and is known for his letter-writing.

Some of his letters were to a
brother-in-law who did not share his faith.I put the thoughts of one of his letters into my own words.‘You know what it is like to seek your
pleasures apart from Christ.I know what
that is like, too.However, I have
experienced something you know nothing about.I know what it is like to seek my pleasures with Christ, and it is
better by far.What’s more, when the
inevitable trails of life befall us both, I have peace that the world can
neither give nor take away.’John Newton
was experiencing life in all its fullness.

This morning I want to think
about life in all its fullness as we see Jesus turn a scene of devastation into
a party through the demonstration of his power over death.

The
look of love

Last week I was at the funeral of
an uncle.Uncle Dick died in his eighties
after dementia and a stroke.It was sad,
for he was a gentle man who was devoted to his family, yet there were smiles as
well as sorrow.You see it was good to
catch up with other uncles and aunts and cousins and their wives and their
children.As I drove home, I thought
how different it would be to have been to be at the funeral in our
passage.The funeral of a young person
is particularly devastating.We prepare
for our parents to go before us, but nothing prepares a person to bury one of
their children.This mother had no other
sons, and she had also buried her husband.In that patriarchal society, her sorrow would be joined by poverty.This was the sort of funeral where it would
have been inappropriate to smile or laugh.This was the kind of occasion that leaves you with faith-shaking
questions.This was a scene of utter
devastation!

Funerals generally took place
around six in the evening.Earlier that
day, the widow would have taken the body of her only son, laid him out, groomed
his hair, put him in the best clothes she had available and placed him on an
open wicker basket.He would have been
face up with arms folded.A crowd would
have gathered and they would have proceeded out the city-gates towards the
graveyard.Most of the town’s
five-hundred people would have been there.

The graveyard at Nain was east of
the city, along the road to Capernaum.Capernaum was where Jesus had his base.Jesus happens to arrive down that road and meets the funeral.There is a crowd with Jesus.Apparently the Greek wording implies that the
crowd with Jesus was even bigger than the funeral.Perhaps there were a thousand people with
him.They give way to let the funeral
pass.

What is the first thing that
Jesus does?He looks!The gospel writers
mention Jesus looking at people about forty times.Often that looking is followed by a
description of how he felt.Matthew
tells us that Jesus looked at a crowd, and had compassion on them because they
were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.Mark says that Jesus looked at the rich young
ruler and loved him.John shows Jesus
looking down from the cross, seeing his mother, and making sure that she would
be looked after.Luke tells us that when
Jesus saw this grieving widow, his heart
went out to her.

The eyes can be a window into the
heart.What Jesus sees touches his heart
and surfaces infinite compassion.He
would have looked with a tender, concerned and engaged look.Because he was compassionate, her pain
affected his emotions.As one writer
says, ‘Jesus enters this woman’s world, feeling what it’s like to be in her
place’ (Paul Miller).

The word translated compassion is
a word that implies deep, gut-wrenching emotion.The four gospel writers only ever use this
word with regards to Jesus, and people in his stories that were like him, such
as the father of the lost son and the Good Samaritan.Jesus’ compassion stood out in a harsh
world.His compassion also showed his
family likeness with his Father.The
apostle Paul calls God, the Father of all
compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles, so that
we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received
from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).The
more we allow Jesus to shape our hearts, the more compassionate we will be.Intimacy with Christ will make us feel for
the needs of others.

The
Lord of Life

Jesus steps forward and says to
the woman, ‘don’t cry.’Then he gently places his hand on the open
coffin and commands the young man to get up.The dead man sat up and began to
talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.I imagine that there was initially silence
and reverent shock, people then looking at each other to confirm that what they
saw really did happen, and there follows an eruption of delightful chattering.

Luke, whose aim is to show his
readers who Jesus really is, records that they were all filled with awe and praised God.“A great prophet has appeared among us.”After four hundred years of silence, since
the close of the Old Testament, God is speaking again. “God has
come to help his people.”Yet their
conclusions about Jesus are not complete.He is a prophet—this scene echoes a time when Elijah raised a widow’s
son—but he is more than a prophet.Luke
will show that Jesus is the promised Christ, the Son of God and the true Lord
of life.

The
death to end death

As we read this story we can be
glad that just as Jesus is compassionate to this widow, and he is compassionate
to us.Look at these verses and be
assured that he cares about your pain and sorrows.I had to bury a friend’s sister, the daughter
of his widowed mother, and I did not know what to say.At the funeral in her house I read this
passage, for although I could not answer the questions that her loss raised I
was assured that Jesus cared.

Yet Luke isn’t just reminding us
that Jesus was compassionate, he was telling us that Jesus has power over
death.After Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead, he exclaimed, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.He who believes in me will live, even though
he dies; and whoever believes in me, will never die.Do you believe this?’

If you are trusting in Jesus then
you don’t need to fret over the passing of time.Jesus has taken care of your funeral
arrangements.You will pass from this
world into his presence.As John Newton
wrote in another letter, ‘one sight of Jesus as He is, will fill our hearts,
and dry up all our tears.’The widow’s
son would die again, but he had encountered the Lord of life.

Don’t forget how Jesus won the
victory over death!Luke will soon show
Jesus’ resolutely turning his face towards Jerusalem, travelling there to die
on by crucifixion.We were on a road marked
‘destruction’; so Jesus took a road marked Calvary.We were dead in transgressions and sin; he
took our guilt upon himself and was raised to give us life.

Are
you fully alive?

Finally, as I read about this
passage, I thought about the fact that eternal life begins know.Like that young man, we have been raised to
life.We have been given life in Christ.We have been saved from emptiness that we
might experience fullness in Jesus.Are
you acting as someone who is fully alive?

Jesus commands us for our
good.He is perfect and all his ways are
good.He calls us to purity, because it
is not fullness of life to be a slave of lust.He tells us to forgive, because bitterness is an acid that eats its own
container.He commissions us to speak of
the cross, not just because he loves those we are talking to, but because he
wants us to know the delight of being on mission.He bids us come spend time in prayer, because
he longs for us to experience more intimacy with our Heavenly Father.He has an infinite amount of love that he
wants to flow through our veins to others, and in doing so enlarge our hearts. He wants us to let go of our regrets and to
delight in the truth that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.As one Christian leader from the
second-century is reported to have said, ‘the glory of God is a man (or woman)
fully alive!’

Saturday, 20 May 2017

‘Because you are worth it,’ says
L’Oréal.Why has that advertising slogan
been so successful?Well, it is telling
people, ‘I know that our product is expensive, but, hey, your value more than
justifies the price.’It also resonates
with the fact that we all have a great desire to be told that we have worth.Oprah says that all our problems are rooted
in a lack of self-worth.However, the
Bible says that our worth is to be found not in self but in God’s grace

My fragile and twisted sense of
self-worth is exposed when someone treats me like a ‘nobody’.Parents rightly feel annoyed when their
children take them for granted.When
someone ends a relationship with us, it hurts to think that the person sees so
no worth in us, and that their life would have more value without us.Millions of people go to counselling saying,
‘I feel that I am worthless.’

Why am I so obsessed with proving
my worth?Can you ever be happy if your
sense of worth is based on people’s opinion of you?The parables of the lost tell us that Jesus
values failed people.But why does he
value us?We are going to see that God
values us because he makes beauty out of ashes (Isaiah 61:3).1.The bad news is that you are worthless.

The story of the Bible involves
humanity being made in the image of God, yet rebelling against our creator.We still have the image of God, but it is
marred.At the heart of our sin is the
fact that we have not considered God to have worth.We have valued independence from him above
living under his infinitely-loving rule.Tragically, our sin has actually rendered us morally worthless.The Apostle Paul writes that, ‘All have
turned aside; together they have become
worthless; no-one does what is good, not even one’ (Romans 3:12).2.The bad news is that you can’t make yourself
worthy.The Pharisees and teachers obeyed
all sort of rules in order to prove their worth.But Jesus exposes the wickedness of their
hearts and the emptiness of their religion, and they hated him for it.Jesus’s teaching damages the self-esteem of
every person who claims to be righteous and good.

It is a hard burden to try to
prove your worth.You slave at
convincing your employer that you are invaluable, only to find that your
replacement is better than you.You try
to convince people that you are a good guy, only to destroy that image with a
bout of moodiness.You might even be
putting on a face for those in church, and be wondering if we would judge you
if we knew what you are really like.

Trying to prove our worth to God
is a dead end street because sin taints everything about us.The Bible teaches us that he root of every
conceivable evil is buried in the soil of our hearts.Isaiah proclaims that all our righteous deeds
are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).Our
corrupt, proud, self-centred souls render us incapable of doing anything truly
good and worthy.We cannot earn worth
before God

Yet Jesus invites those who are
trying to prove themselves by their good works to come to him and experience
rest (Matthew 11:28).Although, we can
do nothing to make ourselves worthy of God’s love, he wants to treat you with
grace.Our worth is not self-worth. Our worth is found in the fact that the God of
grace places great value on worthless humanity.

3.The good news is that Jesus values worthless
things.

The Pharisees complained that
Jesus was associating with people that they considered to have little worth.Jesus has no time for people who want to tell
him how good they are, yet he welcomes those who know that they are evil.It is not so much your badness that will keep
you from Jesus but your belief in your own goodness.Here is great news for all people who are willing
to admit that they are wicked.Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them.

Only grace explains why Jesus
values something that is worthless.He
pictures himself as a woman who had lost a coin. That coin was worth a day’s wages.It may be a part of the woman’s dowry or the
money she is given to provide for the household.So she lights her lamp, sweeps the floor and
celebrates when she finds it.

Jesus went to even greater
lengths to find you.He descended from
heaven, became a man of sorrows who was familiar with grief, and he was pinned
to a cross of shame to pay for your sin.He makes beauty out of ashes.He
makes dearly loved children from depraved humanity.He forgives, cleanses and restoes.Paul writes that we are God’s masterpiece
created in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:10a).

But haven’t we already learned
this through the story of the story of the lost sheep?Why does Jesus seem to tell the same story
twice?Maybe we need to hear it twice?But there is also a significant difference in
the main character.Jesus portrays
himself as being like a woman.That is
important!Religious people of that time
were very chauvinistic.Pious men
thanked God every day that they had not been born a woman.The Pharisees and teachers would never have
told a story that pictured them as female.

While Jesus is telling this story
to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, a crowd would have been listening
in.Among that crowd were women.Among those women were those who had sexually
sinned. As a result they were seen to
have lost value to men.Prostitutes were
thought of as the least valuable of all women.But we are all equally worthless in sin and equally valued in
grace.Jesus recreates what has been
lost.

4.The good
news is that God considers you worth having a party over.There is also a slight difference
in how the celebration is described.I
don’t know if that is significant.Here
we are told that the rejoicing is before the angels of God.Does that point to God being the one who is
rejoicing or all those with him in heaven?Certainly God is among those who rejoice.Do you realise that God was overjoyed to find
you?Can you accept that there was a
party in heaven when Jesus brought you home?Do you know that God goes on delighting over you?He holds you close to his heart (Isaiah
40:11).

A woman went to her pastor.She was on the verge of a nervous
breakdown.She revealed that her father
was an emotional tyrant who said, ‘if you are pretty … if you make good grades
… if you are successful … if you don’t embarrass me in front of people … then I
will love you.’She spent her life
trying to prove her worth.As a result
she could not grasp the fact that God is gracious.She had become a Christian but the gospel
seemed too good to be true to her.After
an hour of trying to convince her of the love of her heavenly Father, the
pastor read from Zephaniah. ‘The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty
to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his
love, he will rejoice over you with singing' (Zeph. 3:17). ‘He
looks at you, he thinks of you … and he sings for joy.’He read it again, and she responded that if
she could only believe that was true, she could face almost anything.

5.The good news is that we can now live worthwhile
lives.Not only does grace give you
worth, in grace God values all you do for him.He is not like a parent who is impossible to please.Grace enables us to live a life worthy of our
calling (Ephesians 4:1 and Philippians 1:27).We do not work for God to prove our worth to him.In love, God takes pleasure in all that we do
for him, even though what we do for him is so imperfect. So we don’t lose heart!

When Bryan Chapell was a young
adolescent, he came across of piece of rotten wood that he thought looked like
the head of a horse.He made a tie rack
out of it and gave it to his father.He
dad delighted in it and used it for years.In truth it looked rather odd.Bryan
later commented that his father loved it, not because it was good but because
he was good. In the same way, God now
delights in of efforts to please him not because they are actually good enough,
but because he is.

Conclusion—Stop
trying to prove your worth!Don’t look within yourself to
find reasons why God loves you.He loves
you in his free, undeserved, unearned and unmerited grace.He has proven his love to you by sending his
Son for you.You don’t have to prove
your worth to him.He placed great value
on your worthless soul and has made you an object of his delight.The reformer Martin Luther sums up the
beautiful paradox when he comments on the verse that reads, ‘I live in faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).Luther writes, ‘I, wretched and damnable
sinner, dearly loved by the Son of God.’

Sunday, 14 May 2017

In 1920s America there was an
unusual court case.It concerned a man
who tripped over one of those large ropes they tie to ships and fell off a
pier.He cried for help but his friends
were too far away. However, there was a
young man sunbathing close by.This
young man was a good swimmer.But he
didn’t want to get wet.The man in the
water drowned.

The parents of the drowned man were
so incensed about this they took the young man to court.But they lost their case.The judge ruled that sun-bather had no legal
responsibility to go to the aid of a drowning person.

That is a reasonable picture of
the Pharisees.The Pharisees believed
that they knew God, but had no concern for other people’s spiritual needs.They failed to see that our God loves to
forgive and they made no effort to reach out to those who need him.How different they were to Jesus, the good
shepherd who comes looking for lost sheep!

1.It awful it is to be lost

For a sheep to be lost was
perilous.Unlike dogs or cats, sheep
don’t have a great ability to find their way home.In a short time that sheep would become the
victim of predators.That sheep was
doomed, unless the shepherd found it.So
the shepherd leaves the other ninety-nine in a safe place and goes looking.

It is an awful thing to be
lost.The apostle Paul says that before
Jesus found us we were dead in transgression and sin … and children of wrath
(Ephesians 2:1-3).Jesus spoke of humanity
being on a wide road leading to destruction.Lostness results in death.Charles
Spurgeon writes, ‘if you are saved yourself, be on the watch for the souls of
others.Your own heart will not prosper
unless it is filled with intense concern to bless your fellow men.The life of your soul lies in faith; its
health lies in love.’

2.Look at
the lengths that Jesus to find the lost

Finding a lost sheep in the
rugged Palestinian countryside would have been a very strenuous task.Some of those predators would have been a
danger to the shepherd.Today, many
tourists go off wandering in those same isolated hills and end up having to be
brought home on stretchers because of over-exposure to the elements.

Not only are people lost, they have
chosen to go astray.We all, like sheep,
have gone astray, each of us turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6).We weren’t looking for him; we were hostile
to him (Romans 8:7).The good shepherd
left his heavenly home, stepped into the wilderness of a rebellious world,
endured mocking and rejection and, while we were still sinners, Christ died for
us.This is personal.Not only did Jesus die for a mass of
humanity, he came looking for you personally.Paul marvels, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).

How gentle this shepherd is!When he finds the lost sheep, after the long
searching, he does not beat it.He does
not seek to teach the dumb, weary sheep a lesson.He joyfully lifts it up.That sheep is weak from its wandering, too
weak to follow the shepherd home.The
shepherd has to carry it on his shoulders.

Sheep are heavy creatures.Our good shepherd is determined to bring us
home.He will not loosen his grip of
us.Having found us, he will not let us
go.Jesus says, ‘For I have come down
from heaven … to do the will of him who sent me.And this is the will of him who sent me, that
I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up on the last
day’ (John 6:38-39).

3.The celebration over those who are brought to
repentance

The angels in heaven have an
advantage over us when it comes to rejoicing over lost people being found.You see, we are hindered by an earthy-perspective
and a sinful nature.Their viewpoint is
from heaven and they are not tempted towards a harsh, unforgiving and
critical-spirit towards people.They
spend their time gazing upon the splendour of our amazing God, and see just how
gracious that God is to welcome sinful people as sons and daughters.They know all about the lamb that was slain
for the sins of his people.They also
are more aware of the terrors of righteous judgement that falls upon those who
refuse to repent, and so delight in merciful heart of a God who rescues so many
from the eternal punishment they deserve.

Don’t misunderstand Jesus’ words.He is using irony when he speaks of righteous
people who do not need to repent.The
Bible is clear that there are none righteous, not even one (Romans 3:10).We live in a world where everybody is
encouraged to believe that they are essentially a good person.Such good people are enemies of the
gospel.My neighbour was telling me that
he is an atheist, and then added, with a smile, but if there is a heaven he is
sure to be going there.After all he
considers himself a good person.Many
sick people do not go to the doctor because they are ignorant of their illness
and so miss out on the cure.

Conclusion

There is a quaint little story
about some children who sought shelter from a storm many in a church many
generations ago in England.In that
church a preacher was speaking on this morning’s verses.He read from the King James Version, ‘And the
Pharisees and scribes murmured, “This man receiveth sinners and eateth with
them.”One of the children went up to
the preacher after the service and said to the preacher, ‘Jesus receives
me!You said that Jesus receives sinners
and Edith with them.I am Edith!’

Jesus does welcome Edith and Paul
and Edwin and Joan.This parable reminds
us of the value of one.Jesus came to
rescue millions of people, but he came to rescue them as precious individuals.He welcomes sinful people and delights in
their repentance.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Jesus
used our feet to seek for the lost?Sharing our faith is a missing ingredient in many of our lives.I don’t speak as someone who finds evangelism
easy, and I have missed many opportunities to speak about Jesus.One writer says, ‘I’ve repeatedly found that
it’s the Christians living out the unexpected adventure [of speaking about
Jesus] who are enjoying the most fulfilling relationships with God.’ You see, Jesus wants you to share your faith
not just because he has a love for the lost, but also because he delights to
bless those he has found.

(The
opening illustration, story about Edith and the insight about why angles
rejoice were taken from Scott McKay, preaching at Saint John Newlands).

Wednesday, 10 May 2017

In one of his sermons on the
prodigal son, the great nineteenth-century London preacher, Charles Spurgeon,
tells of how a dog won his affection:‘When I walked down my garden
some time ago I found a dog amusing himself among the flowers.I knew that he was no gardener, and no dog of
mine, so I threw a stick at him and bade him begone.After I had done so, he conquered me, and
made me ashamed that I had spoken roughly to him, for he picked up my stick,
and, wagging his tail pleasantly, he brought the stick to me, and dropped at my
feet.Do you think I could strike him or
drive him away after that?No, I patted
him and called him good names.The dog
had conquered the man.’

Spurgeon applies the lesson to
prodigals.If an imperfect man is
inclined to have pity on a mischievous dog, how much more sympathy does God
have for a wayward person who returns to him.‘And you, poor sinner, dog as you are, can have confidence enough in God
to come to him just as you are, it is not in his heart to spurn you.There is an omnipotence in simple faith which
will conquer even the divine Being himself.Only do but trust him as he reveals himself in Jesus, and you shall find
salvation.’

Shame can keep us from feeling
free in God.Men, you may be ashamed of
the things that you have viewed on your screens.You have failed so often, that you wonder how
God could still have patience with you.Women,
I don’t know the particular failings that you struggle with, but there are
bound to be things in your life that embarrass you.Parents, you may be ashamed of the many ways
in which you have failed your children. Maybe you carry the wounds of a parent who
exclaimed, ‘I am so disappointed in you.’

I used to have a recurring
dream.It occurred when I first began
paid work for a church.In the dream I
would be in the town’s supermarket, and I would realise that I was in my
underpants.I believe that I was having
that dream because I was scared of being exposed.‘What if the people in the church knew what I
was really like?What if they knew of my
struggles with lust, the insecurity of my faith and how little of the Bible I
really knew?’Do you battle the inner
shame of feeling that you can’t live up to the image you present of yourself?More painful still, maybe you are hiding
secrets, because you are embarrassed about some things in your past and
present.

A blogger called Tim Challies
writes, ‘so many Christians live their lives racked with guilt and shame.They think back to all the things they did,
the sins they committed, whether two days ago or two decades, and live under a
cloud of shame.This shame hurts, it
burns, it incapacitates.’This morning
we are going to see that God loves to cover our shame.

The
young man brought shame upon himself, his family and his community

The younger son is doing
something shameful in asking for his share of the estate.‘…in that culture, the normal response to
this level of impudence would be, at the very least, a hard slap across the
face from the father.This would have
typically been done publically to shame the son who had shown such disdain for
the father’ (MacArthur).

As well as a public renunciation,
there might be a formal dismissal from the family and possibly even a funeral
for the son.That would have been the
only way to avoid allowing the boy to bring lasting reproach against the
family’s good name.However, the father ‘was
willing to endure the pain of spurned affections and public humiliation rather
than disown his son’ (MacArthur).The
Pharisees and teachers of the law who were listening to Jesus would have considered
this father’s response to be shamefully weak.

As the younger son heads off to
the distant land, he brings disgrace to his family, his village and his
religion.Then he lives shamefully among
the pagans, and soon he experiences his own disgrace.When famine comes, he goes to a farmer
looking for work.I doubt that this
farmer was looking to employ anyone at that time.But in that shame-culture you did not turn
down a request for help.So the farmer
offers the boy a job that no self-respecting Jew could accept—feeding unclean
pigs.

Shame
kept him from returning home

So why didn’t he just head
home?I think that he stayed in the
pigsty because he feared the shame that he would experience if he returned
home.Middle-eastern expert, Ken Bailey,
explains that had he come home after dishonouring his village among the
gentiles, he would have been greeted by people who would have broken a clay pot
in front of him and declared that he was dead to them.For the rest of his days, young lads, with
nothing better to do, would have followed him around, taunting him and throwing
dung at him.He was also aware that his
bitter older brother would never let him forget what he had done.The shame he expected to be exposed to on
returning home would be greater than the shame of feeding those pigs.

But, what actually happens on his
return?The father endures shame for the sake of his wayward son.When the father sees the son in the distance,
he sprints.That’s significant.In that culture there was a proverb that said
you could tell the manner of a man by the way he walked. Men over thirty did not run.Respectable men walked in a slow dignified
manner.

I don’t know if you have heard of
Garrison Keillor.He is a radio comedian
that tells stories about an imaginary place called Lake Wobegon.Lake Wobegon, explains Keillor, was the sort
of place where everybody knew everybody else’s business. In fact in Lake Wobegon people did not have to
use indicators when driving because everyone knew where you were going.

First-century Palestinian
villages were the same.Farmers did not
live in isolation amongst their fields.For security they lived in villages and went out to work in their
fields.So everybody has seen the
shameful son set off to the distant land, and they see the father lift his
clock, expose his knees and make a fool of himself as he sprints through the
village to embrace his son.

I know that what motivated the
father to run to his son was his overwhelming feeling of compassion.I also suspect that he was determined to get
to him before the village could have their pot-breaking ceremony.He did not want his son to experience such
pain and disgrace.If he gets to the son
first, and accepts him, then, because of his status in that society, the rest
of the village will have to accept him.He
is willing to be shamed to ensure his son is not.

The great nineteenth-century
London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, says, ‘had the story been that of a selfish
human father only, it might have been written that “as he was coming near, his
father ran out, and kicked him.”’Many
fathers would have looked at the emaciated boy, in rags and covered in pigs’
dirt, and contemptuously declared, ‘look at the state of you!’But not this father!This father orders the best robe to cover the
boy’s shame.

But
not everyone wants to forget his shame

Apparently the fatted-calf could
have fed up to two hundred people.That
means that the father is inviting the whole village.He is showing hospitality to the very people
who gossiped about his wayward son and looked down their noses when they saw
him race out to greet him.The father
shows grace to those who shamed him, as we see very clearly in his dealings
with the older brother.

But
many people don’t want to face your shame

In that culture nothing was
considered worse than shaming someone.The older brother goes out of his way to shame his dad.Ken Bailey says that it is hard to overstate
the sense of embarrassment that would have been caused by the father having to
leave the party and plead with the older son to come in.Fathers did not plead, they simply yielded
unquestioned authority.No one in that
society would have been shocked if the father had order the older son in and
given him a public beating for showing such a lack of respect.As he got up and left, I imagine the guests
whispering to each other, ‘this father is making a fool of himself, again.’

The older son refuses to address
his dad with any term of respect—the omission of the word ‘father’ is telling.Yet the older son thinks he has nothing to be
ashamed of.With great
self-righteousness he says, ‘I have never disobeyed your command.’Like the Pharisees and teachers of the law,
he covered up a cold and bitter heart with proud acts of outward obedience.How sad it is that so many of us insult God
as we cry out, ‘but I am a good person.’Such pretence will fill us with the insecurity and slavery of having to
put on a face to impress.

Jesus
endured shame for us

Thankfully, we have a very
different older brother.Jesus is the
only person who has never done anything to feel ashamed of.He is also the older brother who takes away
our shame.His are the robes of righteousness
that cover our spiritual nakedness (Revelation 7:13-14).Like the father, Jesus acted in a way that
his society considered shameful so that we could be accepted home.Crucifixion was not talked about it in polite
company.If a child talked about the
crucifixions that had taken place that day, they might have been told to wash
their mouth out.However the writer to
the Hebrews tells us to, ‘fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of
our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, scorning
its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Hebrews
12:2).

John Piper explains that Jesus’ ‘friends
gave way in shaming abandonment; his reputation gave way in shaming mockery;
his decency gave way in shaming nakedness; his comfort gave way in shaming
torture.’

Conclusion:It is sinful to hold on to our shame

I can’t tell you that everyone
else will forget your past, but I can tell you about divine forgetfulness.God promises, ‘I will remember you sin no
more.’He has covered our shame.He wants us to be happy and free.

Sometimes we hold onto our shame
because we are proud.Rather than let
God deal with it, we want to prove our worth.We imagine a day where people could say, ‘you are so different than the
emaciated wretch you once were.’But
such pride dishonours God’s grace.

And now we can be
transparent.We can admit to today’s
failings because the blood of Jesus goes on cleansing us from all
unrighteousness (1 John 1:7).While
others might look down on us, we have the acceptance of the only one who really
matters.As the former slave-trader and
hymn-writer said near the end of his life, ‘although my memory's fading, I
remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great
Saviour.’

About Me

I am married to Caroline and I am father to Anya, Ronan and Sian. I am a Christian by the grace of God which is made available through the cross of Christ. I serve as pastor in Limerick Baptist Church.